Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Another Earth?

Leave a comment

Interstellar Tour Log: January 20, 2014
Somewhere in deep space

There are some things you can accomplish quite well in space (e.g. mid-air cartwheels) and others, well … not so much. I’m afraid our January podcast is an example of the latter.

Big GreenThose of you anxiously awaiting the new episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, take heart: it’s in the works, though Matt’s interplanetary breathing apparatus is getting in the way of his doing a credible talking horse imitation. (You’d think it would be a positive boon, but no.) We’re hoping this problem will be eliminated when we arrive at the gassy, Earth-like planet known as KOI-314c, which – I’m guessing – has a perfectly breathable Earth-like atmosphere. (Hey, they said it was Earth-like. That’s all I need to hear. We’re playing there.)

Interstellar Tour Log: January 23, 2014
Somewhere else in deep space

Well, we’ve arrived on  KOI-314c, and if this is Earth-like, things have gone seriously downhill back on Earth since we left.  We sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out there to gather environmental data (and hunt down some performance venues), and after twirling a few antennae and waving his arms about, he gave us the following run-down on a little strip of paper that might have emerged from a 1920’s vintage stock ticker:

  • Surface temperature: 104 degrees centigrade
  • Length of year: 23 days
  • Atmospheric composition: hydrogen and helium

Looks harmless enoughI wouldn’t say this news was received with a total lack of enthusiasm. Anti-Lincoln was just dying to get out there and take a dip in one of the nearby liquid methane pools. And for sFshzenKlyrn, the guitarist from Zenon, this sounds like a tropical paradise. There are some issues, however, should we be asked to do an outdoor concert. First, my Kork SV-1 would probably melt at 104C. Second, the helium in the atmosphere would make us all sing like those munchkin dudes from the lollipop gym.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) And if we are contracted to play again next year, that’s just 23 days from now.

Guess we’ll consider this conundrum from inside our rented spacecraft for the time being. Maybe even get a chance to finish the podcast. We’ll see, eh?

Usual Rubbish

Learning Capellini.

Leave a comment

I’m sure I’m not the first to make this observation, but I’ll say it anyway. There’s something compelling about Capella (the Goat star). What it compels us to do is another thing entirely.

Big GreenBooked into another series of club dates on the fourth stone out from Capella, my Big Green colleagues and I have tried to make the best of it. It hasn’t been easy. For one thing, the locals here are not very fond of country music, and since our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, is largely made up of mock-country numbers,  that puts a damper on things. We’ve had to reach deep down into the song bag to keep these rock-like creatures happy. (And by that crack I don’t simply mean that they like rock music. I mean, they are themselves animate rocks, with stony arms and legs and eyes like geodes. But yes, unsurprisingly, they prefer rock music.)

We asked sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, to remove his cowboy hat for the duration (he tries his best to look the part when we go all Rick Perry) and light into some of our heavier numbers from days past, like Why Not Call It George?, one of Matt’s more rocking ruminations on the scientific method. Here’s an excerpt of the lyric, last verse:

Continental drift can be reversed
great tumblers shift
and Pangaea can be reclaimed
After me it can be renamed
Why not call it George? Call it George, after me

Do you speak Capellini?Always a favorite of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who would very much like to name a continent after himself, particularly if said continent was the result of an experiment gone horribly right.

Well, sFshzenKlyrn turned in a searing solo that sent the rock-like denizens of Capella 4 into fits of geological ecstasy. There was waving and shouting, and if I spoke Capellini, I could tell you what they were saying. Their wallets speak louder than words, however, and they were grateful enough to drop some serious stone on us before the end of our week-long engagement. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a built-in assay lab, and he tells me that the currency rocks on Capella four are mostly feldspar, with traces of iron. Not exactly a fortune, but we’ll leave that to be made elsewhere.

Next stop: Earth-Mass Gassy Planet KOI-314c

Usual Rubbish

Rigelian casaba fever.

Leave a comment

Which star is this again? I get them mixed up sometimes. We did Betelgeuse. We did Aldebaran. One big red, the other little yellow. Now it’s time for a blue star … Rigel. Perfect place to play the blues.

Big GreenBig Green playing the blues … on our interstellar tour to support Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick? Well … sure, why not. That’s some of what we started out by playing many, many moons (and many suns) ago, before we started writing a lot of our own music. We played Taj Mahal numbers, real standards like Statesboro Blues, and similar stuff, along with songs by The Beatles, The Band, Neil Young, etc. In our early days as Big Green, we had an alter ego cover band that performed under a series of ridiculous names, including “The Space Hippies”, “I-19”, and others. (One club owner, I recall, refused to hire The Space Hippies, claiming that, if he did, he would be “laughed out of Utica.” That’s when we founded the band, “Laughed out of Utica”.)

Right, so … our first night on Rigel, we started out with our old club date rendition of Corrina, Corrina. The non-corporeal beings of Rigel 3 went wild, as far as we can tell. The only way we can register any type of response is through highly sophisticated scanning equipment we borrowed from Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (they use it to track labor organizers in their mines and on their plantations). According to thRigel looks invitinge sensodyne magenetometer, the charged particles that make up most of the mass of Rigelian “bodies” were vibrating at a particularly high frequency during Corrina, Corrina. I call that success.

Of course, we are having some mechanical problems with our spacecraft. Nothing new there. Just a matter of thrust, or lack of same. Too many Rigelian casabas in the fuel mix, I suspect. We’re likely to stay on Rigel 3 for a couple more days, since we can’t seem to escape its orbit.  sFshzenKlyrn, our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, has gone on to the next engagement ahead of us, since he does not require a space craft to travel between worlds. Handy, that. One day, perhaps he’ll show me how it’s done. Then I’ll make Marvin (my personal robot assistant) do it.

Next stop: Capella.

Usual Rubbish

Slingshot.

Leave a comment

That looks like Rigel over there. And Arcturus. And Canopus. No, wait. That’s Canoli, a most unusual deep space object. Instead of a molten nickel core, it’s filled with almond paste. And that dusting of what looks like dry ice? Powdered sugar.

Big GreenOh, hi. Just getting our bearings here out in deepest, darkest space. Kind of hard to do without a map – yes, I’m looking at you, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who left the map case under his workbench back home. Right, so … chartless, clueless, and nearly devoid of rocket propellant, Big Green is meandering its way to the first stop on our interstellar tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which is charting in the Crab Nebula this month, I hear. (Yes, I read the trades.)

How did we get into this pickle, this sitch, this hot water, this plate of spinach? Well … it all started when we hitched a ride on the charred remnants of the comet ISON as it made its way out of the solar system. It’s kind of like driving in the wake of a big semi on the Thruway to save gas – doesn’t work real well, but you can pretend that you’re doing something useful. Anyway, we got a grappling hook into ISON as it passed and it yanked us into motion, headed for the hairy edge of all we know and hold dear.

Not THAT kind of slingshot!That was the good part. The bad part was when the cable snapped in the vicinity of Jupiter, a hostile world that gave Cowboy Scat a right panning (like I said, I read the freaking trades!). We were caught in the gas giant’s gravitational pull, helpless but for the fading memory of Star Trek plot devices from fifty years ago. Or was it Lost in Space? Well, whatever the source, we used the “slingshot effect”, accelerating toward the planet and using its gravity to hurl us straight out the other side of the solar system.

Gripping drama indeed. Except now we’re, well, lost, and bobbing along practically at random. So if you’ve got friends on Aldebaran, just tell them we may be a little late for the gig next Wednesday.

Usual Rubbish

Ison the prize.

Leave a comment

Okay, well, THAT didn’t go so well, did it? Right. Don’t panic. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three … arrrrrgghhh.

Is Smith frying yet?It’s been a couple of weeks, so I don’t know if you recall our harebrained plan to get to the various extraterrestrial venues in our interstellar tour to support Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (selling quite briskly on Aldebaran, I hear). Right, well… we have that rent-a-wreck rocket (or “wreck-it”) that will get us part of the way to Aldebaran and points west-southwest, but it doesn’t quite have the horsepower to escape our solar system. If we tried, at this time of year, we would get caught in the gravitational pull of the sun. Then the only pleasure we’d get out of this trip would be to watch Smith fry…

Okay, I’ve wandered a bit. Fact is, the only solution we could think up in the absence of our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee is to launch ourselves into extended orbit around the Earth and hitch a ride on the comet ISON when it emerged from its close encounter with the sun. We would, I don’t know, throw a grappling hook onto it as it passed and it would pull us clear of the solar system, at which time the low-rent engines in the rent-a-wreck-it could handle getting us to the next star system. Simple, right?

Big GreenNot so right. Only trouble with this plan was … it could never work. Aside from that, it was sound. So we took off last week, using the Cheney Hammer Mill courtyard as a makeshift launch pad, and spent a good bit of fuel climbing up into extended orbit around the Earth ( or the “Oyt”, if you’re from East Chootica ), Marvin (my personal robot assistant) at the controls. Steady hand, indeed.

Now, 3 out of 5 astrophysicists supposed that ISON would make it around the sun in one piece. Wouldn’t you know that the other two had it right? So we’re hovering at the rendezvous point, and around the left side of the sun comes this charred looking ice chunk, tumbling along, no bigger than the average medicine ball. Try getting a grappling hook into THAT sucker.

Okay, so… NOW what do we do? Any astrophysicists out there? Methods for counteracting the sun’s gravity? Email them to us ASAP. Like, I don’t know, yesterday, perhaps.

Usual Rubbish

That’s strange.

Leave a comment

I think that’s the last of it. Packed tight, top to bottom. Nice job, lads. Okay … pop the nose cone back on. Time to light this candle!

Nothing to see here, right, Marvin?Oh, howdy. Yup, we’re getting ready to embark on our upcoming interstellar tour in support of our album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which as been a absolute drug on the market down here on earth, but is selling much more briskly in outer spaaaaaaaaaace. Seems like extraterrestrials are totally ready for satirical country-western, mock-pop, found sound records like ours. Who knew?

Now if they only adopted some kind of currency that is convertible into our own. Right now they’re paying us in photons. No, really. Every month, we get a box full of light in lieu of a royalty check. Try taking that to Chase Bank. I can’t even get mortgage backed securities in exchange for that stuff. Still, it’s worth something on Aldebaran, and that’s all that counts … if you live on Aldebaran. (We usually resort to doing all our shopping out there, as it happens.)

Big GreenSome of you are probably wondering whether it’s safe for us to venture beyond the protective atmosphere of mother earth in such a ramshackle looking spacecraft. I totally get that. The thing is, we have assurances from Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that if anything goes badly wrong in the icy vacuum of space, he will be responsible for the consequences. Knowing how risk-averse Marvin has always been, that fills me with confidence. My bandmates look a little nervous, sure, particularly after hearing about the comet ISON, which is in the process of rounding the sun as we speak.

Will we escape ISON’s enormous coma of deadly gasses? Are they indeed deadly as I just claimed just a few key strokes ago? Answers to these and other questions await our liftoff in FIVE …. FOUR … THREE … TWO … days.

Usual Rubbish

What to bring?

Leave a comment

I don’t know. Do we really need a hibachi? We’re all vegetarians, except for Marvin, who only eats electricity and petroleum distillates. Well… okay, then.

Big GreenHi, friend of Big Green. What are they doing now? It’s called getting ready for an interstellar tour, as yet unnamed, to support extraterrestrial sales of our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. It took us long enough, but we did secure adequate transport for the seemingly impossible journey ahead of us. (Carl Sagan would say it is simply impossible, but he is not available to comment. Ergo … it’s possible.) Some over-the-road hauler dragged the missile here from the Moon, where its (asshole) owner left it for our retrieval. Jesus H. Christ, the company brought the craft all the way from Neptune, but apparently thought the moon was close enough.

The accommodations on board, mind you, are a tad spare. Spartan, you might say. Ever read a book by one of the original NASA astronauts? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. A bit like a t.v. submarine, only with rocket engines instead of propellers and no periscope. I’m no Wilt Chamberlain, and I have to duck down low to get under the rafters. And the cockpit is full of retro-looking levers and switches. One of the toggles is marked, “Kill” – not sure Wait, it does have a periscope!what that does. I wonder … if you switch it back and forth, does something, somewhere, cease to exist and then come back to life again? Important question.

On a rack in the control room is about a dozen pressure suits that look like something out of a 1960s sci-fi movie. You know – the ones with accordion-like joints and white crash helmets with visors. I’m guessing that means there is no artificial atmosphere in this beast, but I’m counting on someone with some technical knowledge to determine that for us. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been serving as a surrogate mad scientist while Mitch Macaphee continues to enjoy his hammock in Madagascar (if that is where he truly is, the bounder!).

We need all the help we can get. Now, where did I pack my packing list? Hmmmmm….

Usual Rubbish

Down for the count.

Leave a comment

Okay, I think we have this thing settled. Everyone in agreement? No? Good. We value diversity of perspective here at Big Green. Especially when LIVES HANG IN THE BALANCE….

Big GreenSorry, friends. I hate to raise my voice, but sometimes you just have to. With sketchy-looking promoters breathing down our necks (and judging by the aroma, they had limburger hoagies for lunch), we are still hashing out the details of our means of transport on our rapidly approaching interstellar tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our latest album. We have, in fact, identified a rent-a-wreck spacecraft that is within our budget. It’s being offered by a subsidiary of our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., operating on the planet Neptune. Fortunately, they deliver. (But only as far as the moon. I guess that extra 239,000 miles is a bridge too far for these goons.)

Okay, my thought was this. We program Marvin (my personal assistant) with the ability to fly the craft from the moon back to Earth. Then we, well, get him to the moon somehow. Matt suggested one of those really big rubber bands, stretched between the legs of the St. Louis Arch – just aim and shoot! Sure, that sounds good, dear brother, but how the hell are we going to get to St. Lookin' good, Marvin. Louis? We can’t even get to the moon, for chrissake. Then there’s always the option of telemetry – just flying the ship here by remote control. But with Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, in a hammock in Madagascar for the fourth consecutive month, we haven’t the means of contriving such a device.

Damn … if that hammock were only here instead of Madagascar, we could maybe use that instead of the rubber band. Hmmmmm…

Anyhow, I saw a picture of the ship, and it looks pretty tight. Kind of like a 1979 Oldsmobile diesel station wagon, only a little less buff. (Matt doesn’t see what I’m seeing. He thinks it’s a death trap. I see only goodness and niceness.) If I can share it with you, damn it, I will.

Well … while we’re waiting for the countdown to begin, we’ve got a podcast to finish. So, down to the basement, man the mics! Stop making sense!

Usual Rubbish

Time wasting.

Leave a comment

Ever see that episode of Lost In Space when they’re rushing to get the piece-of-shit Jupiter 2 spaceworthy before the planet they’ve been living on for an entire television season explodes beneath them? Yeah, well … that’s sort of where Big Green is right now.

Big GreenNo, a stereotypical t.v. gold miner named Mister Nerim is not fracking the Cosmonium out of the living rock beneath us (at least, not yet), but it’s nearly as bad. Our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (also known as Hegephonic) has arranged for an interstellar tour to support the release of our most recent album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which – while it hasn’t done squat down here on earth – is selling briskly on Aldebaran, I hear.  (Great music always finds its audience. And, well, ours does, too, if it travels far enough.)

Of course, Hegemonic subcontracted the tour arrangements to some underworld figures, as they typically do. That has its upsides, like … I don’t know …. valet parking on Aldebaran? Free breakfast for gamblers? No, it’s the downsides I’m more concerned with. Like the fact that the contractors just handle the booking; the transportation is completely up to us. So as you saw last week, we’ve been scrambling to pull together some kind of interstellar space vessel – quite a challenge in the continued absence of our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who is sunning himself in beautiful Madagascar right now.

Well ... a little ambitious, perhaps. Don’t know if you know this, but underworld booking agents take breach of contract kind of seriously. That’s why we’re resorting to just about any means of getting from one planet to the other. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) helpfully suggested a design for a new space craft, but it seems a little ambitious, to be perfectly frank. I’m not certain that we need anything with forty-story legs and a cavernous exercise room. I was thinking something more on the modest size. Maybe a step up from the 1954 GMC city coach, but not a large step.

Hey, however we do it, we’ll need to have it done in a few weeks. Got suggestions? Put them behind the hot water pipes. I’ll find them.

Usual Rubbish

Lost eppy.

Leave a comment

Don’t bother me with that now, Marvin. Yes, I’ve seen you juggle before. But Big Green’s interstellar stage show has no slot for jugglers, even if they toss molten crowbars in the air five at a time. What the hell do you think this is, Ringling Brothers? Perry brothers, damn it. Whole different circus.

Seriously, sometimes it feels like I’m running a two-bit talent agency in lower Broadway in 1947. Ever feel that way? Well … I have, and it’s right now. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has gotten it into his brass head that he needs to warm up our audiences, particularly in venues like Neptune, where the average daily high is something like 55 Kelvin (that’s -218 Celsius to you and I). In that kind of climate, Marvin reasons, a little foot-stomping can’t go amiss. Sure, he’s got a point … but juggling? On a plain-clothes rock stage? Come on.

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of you – maybe five or six or even more – who are wondering what the hell happened to our September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast. Good question. Fact is, it’s finished … Matt and I did our meaningless conversation segment just a couple of hours ago. It has, of course, become the “lost” September episode, in as much as October is now upon us. Yet another October – who would have believed we would have two in as many years? What are the chances?

Big GreenAnyhow, the “lost” September episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, due out any day now, is another blockbuster extravaganza, with a special episode of Ned Trek featuring no less than five or six brand spanking new Big Green songs, sung in dialect and embedded in the very woof of the program. It is a feast for sore ears. Feast your ears on this shit, and they’ll be sore, for sure. Yes, you’re welcome.

Stuff to do. Got to get back to planning our interstellar tour to support sales of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And my cat Sara wants a snack. Coming … !